Power Of Peace

SANTANA AND THE ISLEY BROTHERS

Description

Label Review.

2017 album. This is a musical collaboration connecting The Isley Brothers & Santana on a musical journey through some of the immortal soul, funk, blues, jazz, rock & pop songs that continue to influence & inspire them. The album is produced & arranged by Carlos Santana, with Ronald Isley on lead vocals.

Our Overview.

The collaboration began in 2014. Santana was touring with Rod Stewart, whose band included Ronald Isley’s sister-in-law, Kimberly Johnson-Breaux. When Isley checked out their show in St. Louis, Santana invited him up onstage for impromptu jams on ‘It’s Your Thing’ and ‘That Lady’. The two began talking about working together, resulting in Isley contributing vocals to 2016’s ‘Santana IV’, which reunited members of that band’s early lineups.

Santana and Isley began selecting material to potentially cover and then entered the studio in the Summer of 2016 with no planning to see what would emerge. Four days later, the album was ready. “We got a basic track and they said, ‘Let’s do another one,’ and ‘Let’s do the next one,’” Ernie Isley says. “We put Ronald in front of the microphone and, boom.” A fervent version of Swamp Dogg’s 1970 hit “Total Destruction to Your Mind” became a particular guitar-jam highlight between Carlos and Ernie. “We were both grinning like two little kids riding bikes and eating ice-cream cones,” says Ernie.” The musicians also cut Cindy Blackman Santana’s original “I Remember,” featuring the drummer on lead vocals.

Carlos says of the albums pro-peace message: “With everything happening in the world with augmented intense fear everywhere – and getting worse and worse – this is an antidote,” he says. “When you listen to this music you give people courage, clarity, conviction and consistency of believing that there’s something more than the fear that CNN, the CIA, the Pentagon and Hollywood are selling constantly. This is the opposite of that.”